Mira Sorvino.

If there’s one force that can affect social change, it’s a bunch of tech types ripped away from their computers and interfacing with one another. Inspired, perhaps, by the monumental leaps forward the TED conference has given our society, the Social Good Summit, presented by web concern Mashable, overlaps with the United Nations’s General Assembly in timing as well as some speakers. Former prime ministers of Poland and Norway, intellectual bon vivant Jeffrey Sachs and UN Goodwill Ambassadors Forest Whitaker and Mira Sorvino will all be addressing Mashable readers and other concerned citizens of the globe. Don’t worry if you can’t make it out today (Indian summer weekend on Fire Island?)—the conference continues tomorrow with Deepak Chopra and Ugly Betty’s America Ferrera.

Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, event runs Saturday through Monday, tickets and information can be found at socialgoodsummit2012.eventbrite.com.

Jane Fonda, future Nancy Reagan on film. (Getty Images)

Lee Daniels, director of Precious, is currently in Cannes promoting the thriller The Paperboy, but he's already planning his next film, an adaptation of a Washington Post article on a long-serving black White House butler who lived to see the election of Barack Obama. Early reports indicate that the butler, Eugene Allen, is to be played by Forest Whitaker and his wife by Oprah Winfrey, who likely needs a distraction from her OWN cable network. Matthew McConaughey, in Mr. Daniels's Paperboy, is to play John F. Kennedy, somehow (but his accent is pure LBJ!); John Cusack is to become the latest actor to assay the part of Richard Nixon; Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda are playing the Reagans; Nicole Kidman is playing an unnamed role that we'd wager a President's salary will be Jackie Kennedy.

It's all very strange (a Brit playing the iconic Reagan? Jane Fonda playing a demure conservative?) but Lee Daniels has a knack for making peculiar casting work--his directing won Mo'Nique an Oscar and Mariah Carey newfound respect, and John Cusack as Nixon has a peculiar sweaty genius to it. He'll be the one who wins an Oscar for this, right?

I’m the first to admit that I went into Where the Wild Things Are with perhaps too high expectations. I blame part of this on the most excellent trailer—remember that teaser, released back in March, full of sumptuous, wondrous images set to that infectious Arcade Fire song? It seemed (regardless of the chatter over delays and studio clashes that has followed this project around) to be a perfect combination of parts: Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book; director Spike Jonze, the wacky mind behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (not to mention some of the best music videos around. And hey, remember music videos?); co-writer (with Jonze) Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and co-writer of the charming Away We Go. Plus, have you taken a good look at this Max Records kid, who plays Max in this movie? He has the most sweetly melancholic face—one can’t imagine him just walking into an audition. It seems more likely that the twee trinity of Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola and Mr. Jonze all joined forces to cook up his genetics, Gattaca-style.

The film starts off pitch-perfect. Young Max, just like in the book, is a mischievous boy who gathers snowballs to pelt his older sister and her friends, makes forts, throws tantrums, etc. But Mr. Jonze is also able to capture how long those childhood afternoons can drag, and how lonely being a kid can be. The rage that gets Max sent out of the room without dinner is more dramatic than it is in the source material (of course, it’s impossible to make a 100-minute movie to match a book that takes somewhere between one and three minutes to read), and is borne of a new backstory about a divorced mom and her new boyfriend (oh hi, Mark Ruffalo!). Suffice it to say, it’s not a mysterious forest that grows out of Max’s bedroom (bummer) but a fantastical journey that Max takes, which involves a seafaring passage that would make the Losties proud. And there, finally, is where we meet our Wild Things.

So here’s the thing: This movie looks so damn perfect. The sunshine filters beautifully through insanely tall trees, and those giant puppets are great-looking and move with a balletic grace that is fascinating to see. Yet once Mr. Jonze and Mr. Eggers depart from the bare-bones text, allowing the Wild Things to speak (it’s a little hard not to think of Tony Soprano when you hear James Gandolfini’s voice, even if it’s coming from a giant puppet), things get a little strange. The gang (which includes effective voice portrayals from Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Dano and Chris Cooper) is less wild than they are unhappy, and there are some very adultlike gripes and resentments running through the creature community when Max arrives. Which is not to say there aren’t some truly inspired moments within the film (just wait till you meet Bob and Terry). But something doesn’t quite jell, and no matter how gorgeous each set piece is, it doesn’t always entirely add up to a complete and satisfying narrative. I couldn’t help but think, from time to time, how on earth were these guys allowed to make this movie?

This one is certainly not going to be for the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs crowd. I can’t imagine any young kid seeing it, not just because parts of it are dark and kind of scary, but because I can’t imagine any small fry having the attention span to stick with it. Perhaps the target audience can be identified through the line of Where the Wild Things Are clothes, key chains and decorations available at … Urban Outfitters. 

svilkomerson@observer.com

Fragments is aptly titled. In style and format, it’s another connect-the-dots movie cut from the same bolt of cinematic fabric as  Crash, 21 Grams, and Babel. An act of random violence erupts in a Los Angeles diner, impacting the lives of several innocent survivors and triggering multiple, intercutting story strands, connected by a slim thread of circumstance. There is a big difference. Those films used life-or-death situations to achieve wrenching effects. In Fragments the connecting tissue is so frayed that it wears out fast.

The opening incident is indeed tragic, but the survivors meander fitfully, reaching no heights of human drama. The film succeeds mainly in the fascination of watching an excellent cast search vainly for a moral center. Kate Beckinsale, Guy Pearce, Dakota Fanning, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson and Jeanne Tripplehorn are among the castaways. Each has a powerful moment or two, but their stories don’t add up to much more than small change. A dad treating his daughter Anne (Ms. Fanning) and her friend Jimmy to a snack begs for mercy when the killer aims his gun at their heads. Just before the gunman pumps bullets through the man’s head, Dad weeps and says, “Please.” Anne convinces her grief-stricken mother (Ms. Tripplehorn) that he was brave and noble in the face of death, but the fact that both kids regard him as a coward seems to torture them endlessly. The frustrated surgeon (Mr. Pearce) who can’t save them all, and who feels guilty for opening the door for the killer, sidetracks the film by becoming obsessed with finding a cure for his wife’s migraines. A cancer patient (Mr. Whitaker) with a bullet wound escapes from the reality of what happened by losing himself in a gambling casino for three days. He wants to make enough money to leave his daughter (Ms. Hudson) and her baby with some financial security after he’s gone. The waitress who witnessed the whole thing (Ms. Beckinsale) turns to promiscuity as she goes slowly mad. Submerged in mourning, little Anne loses touch with her environment and becomes a religious fanatic, while her mom embraces her inner rage and Jimmy, who was under the table during the shooting, loses his voice and becomes a mute. Everyone grieves differently, but none of this is comfortably convincing.

The press labels the survivors lucky, but are they? None of the victims will be able to walk back into the daylight whole, healthy or self-contained in their safe little worlds. But sadly, their stories are not very interesting, the writing (by Roy Freirich, who adapted the script from his novel, Winged Creatures) is perfunctory and Rowan Woods’ direction lacks both energy and logic. The pace is too languid to sustain much viewer concentration, and whatever the characters go through seems only peripherally connected to the shooting in the diner. Close, but no cigar.

rreed@observer.com

Sweaty BALLS! Is it time yet to empty our checking accounts (of course we don’t have any investments, real estate or 401(k), ya big silly) and flee to, eek, Quebec? Or better yet—Pompeii? Or should we just close our eyes, pretend nothing is happening and drop a couple thou on a big fancy benefit? In midtown, Hollywood grande dame Glenn Close is recognized for her contributions to the arts (lorgnettes! boiled bunnies!) at the Princess Grace Awards Gala at Cipriani. Co-chairs include Manhattan mega-broker Dolly Lenz and Law & Order creator Dick Wolf. Further west, the cologned smoothies at GQ throw a sedate Gentlemen’s Ball to fete the magazine’s charity initiatives; guests of honor will include actors Mark Wahlberg and Forest Whitaker, music producers Timbaland, whiny singer Usher, and NBA player Steve Nash. Meanwhile, thank heaven some entertainment can still be had for $10.75 in this city! Edward Norton tries to recover from his big Hulkin’ fiasco with a cop drama called Pride and Glory (not to be confused with Hope and Glory or Pride and Prejudice), which premieres at Loews Lincoln Square tonight. On the red carpet: Mr. Norton; sex maniac Colin Farrell; Angelina Jolie’s estranged papa, Jon Voight; and Jennifer Ehle, an actress best known, coincidentally, for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the Pride and Prejudice that did not star Keira Knightley. … And in other big-screwen news, Film Forum debuts Frontrunners, a documentary about election time … at striver-stuffed Stuyvesant High School! Among those running for class president is young punk George Zisiadis, now a Harvard sophomore like most of his other classmates. “I learned that people value you getting down and dirty,” Mr. Zisiadis told us. Also: “I’m fond of quoting Churchill. ‘If you’re under 30 and don’t vote liberal, you have no heart …’” No wonder Harvard rejected us!

[Princess Grace Awards Gala, Cipriani 42nd Street, 6:30 p.m., 212-245-6570; GQ Gentlemen’s Ball, the Edison Ballroom, 228 West 47th Street, 7 p.m., invitation only; Pride and Glory premiere, Loews Lincoln Square 13, 6 p.m., invitation only; Frontrunners, Film Forum, West Houston Street, 212-727-8110, www.filmforum.org]

mbryan@observer.com

The magazine also reports that the show will be written by Gren Wells, an executive producer of NBC's hit weight loss show The Biggest Loser.

"It's the magic pill theory," said producer David Broome. "As a society, we don't care what the side effects are to these pills. I thought it would be an interesting world to look into, the fact that it's a market unregulated by the FDA."

Maybe HBO is hoping Fat Sells will be their own magic pill for their struggling fall schedule.

First, the good news: Vantage Point is a nonstop thrill ride with no emergency cord to allow you to slow down or get off. You just hold your breath and hope you don’t get injured. It’s got a perfect cast at full tilt, breathtaking action cinematography that keeps your pace pulsing and your heart pounding, and so many plot twists you won’t even think about a potty break. This movie is never boring, which is saying a lot.

Now, the bad news: Vantage Point keeps you guessing without ever telling you why. It’s the harrowing story of a terrorist plot to assassinate the president of the United States (William Hurt) in the middle of a landmark coalition of leaders from five continents in the middle of a town square in Salamanca, Spain. During the opening ceremony of the summit conference to solve the crisis of global terrorism, just after the president’s motorcade arrives in the plaza, two shots ring out, the leader of the free world keels over in a pool of blood, and chaos runs rampant. Before the tough producer of network coverage of the event (Sigourney Weaver) can organize the shocked news crew from a nearby control center, a bomb goes off under the bleachers and blows up the plaza, killing masses of onlookers. As all hell breaks loose, the movie rewinds to 23 minutes earlier and we start seeing the incident from different points of view. The style borrows heavily from Kurosawa’s legendary Rashomon, but instead of three vantage points, we get more. The movie says eight, but I lost track after five. Anyway, the point is, every time the film rewinds 23 minutes, you get a new clue. If you miss one, you’re lost. Forget about popcorn. There’s no time for refills, and what you bought already will be all over the floor.

First there’s Barnes, a brave Secret Service agent (Dennis Quaid), still psychologically suspect after being shot himself in the line of duty only six months earlier. Aging but incredibly fit, he tackles a Spanish cop rushing to the scene who claims he is only trying to protect the mayor, and spots a window where the murder suspect has been hiding, while other curious and illogical priorities are followed by his best friend and fellow Secret Service agent, Kent (Matthew Fox, whose agent must have said, “We need a feature to guarantee your career if Lost doesn’t get renewed for another season”).

Next, we follow Enrique, the Spanish cop (acclaimed Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega), who watched his girlfriend plant the bomb and escapes through the cobblestone streets chased by the Americans. Then we meet an innocent but conscientious American tourist (Forest Whitaker), who photographed the entire event with his high-definition camcorder. He’s got everything and everybody on tape, including the killers, and is the only one who knows they’re pursuing the wrong man. The entire city is paralyzed, the C.I.A. can’t even reach the White House, but this tourist is the only man in Spain who can call home to warn his wife to turn on Good Morning America—on a cell phone, yet.

There’s more. This assassination has more reruns than Murder, She Wrote. Are you ready for the revelation that it was a double who was shot, while the actual president, frozen with horror, watches the whole thing from a hotel room window? Sort of like Andy Warhol in the old days, dispatching look-alikes to book signings. Next, the film targets the terrorists themselves, who knew about the “double” from the get-go and blew up the square as a diversion while they kidnapped the real world leader and full-pedaled him through the traffic in a fake ambulance. (Don’t ask.) While we are inundated with real clues and red herrings (an oscillating fan, a lost child with an ice cream cone, a suicide bomber disguised as a hotel bellhop), I guess it would be too much to ask “What is going on here … and why?”

But ask we must. Who are the terrorists and what is their goal? Described only as “a local group” (huh?), their motives are never explained. And by the end of the fifth rerun, when the secret identity of the real assassin turns out to be the biggest shock in the film, you may begin to wonder if they’ve all been watching too many network reruns themselves. He’s a far cry from Idi Amin, but why is Mr. Whitaker—overweight, lame and with only one eye—racing through the traffic dodging trucks and minivans to scoop up the little girl with the ice cream cone? Is this how we treat our Oscar winners? Sigourney Weaver’s talent is so wasted she almost seems like an afterthought. They’re all fine, the camerawork is sensational and director Pete Travis knows exactly where to station the people and equipment without bothering to explain why, and I honestly admit I was on the edge of my seat. But the sense of déjà vu I had watching so many runaway vehicles crashing and smashing through the narrow cobblestone Spanish streets only reminded me how much more fun I’ve had watching the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

Small wonder that Even Money is the most rewarding new film of the week. For one thing, it is directed by Mark Rydell, a real director instead of a hack. From The Reivers and Jeremiah Johnson to The Rose and On Golden Pond, the intelligence of Mr Rydell’s subject matter, the intense control of every aspect of his projects (from script to camera work), and the personalized intuition and compassion with which he inspires confidence in his actors have added up to an impressive body of work. Even Money is a cautionary tale about gambling addiction. The message is: “Never risk what you can’t afford to lose, because eventually everyone wants more.” The style is raw grit. The result is a shock to the system that leaves you numb.

Set not in Vegas but in any town in America where gambling is legal and souls go unprotected, the fates of nine people become interwoven in a web of intrigue, desperation and death. Kim Basinger, less ravishing than usual with dishwatery brown hair but no less riveting, is Carol, a housewife and novelist with writer’s block who pretends that she’s always doing her writing at Starbucks. Ray Liotta is her loyal, devoted husband Tom, a teacher who is ravaged to the core when he finds out she’s gambled away the family savings and their 13-year-old daughter’s college fund. Forest Whitaker is Clyde Snow, a plumber-handyman who talks his kid brother Godfrey into throwing a championship basketball game so he can pay back the gambling debt he owes to the vicious mobster named Victor (Tim Roth), who also controls the lives of two bookies named Augie and Murph (Jay Mohr and Grant Sullivan) and a crooked detective (an unrecognizable Kelsey Grammer, with Nicole Kidman’s plastic nose from The Hours). Factor in Murph’s innocent, honest girlfriend (Carla Gugino) and a has-been magician (Danny DeVito) who works the gaming tables for tips and talks Carol into betting her last dime to save her marriage and family, and you have a poison stew. And murder is the dessert.

Great acting informs the conflicted lives in Even Money. The anxieties are universal (This could happen to me!) and director Rydell balances every move on the head of a pin. While each vignette contributes to the whole puzzle, the characters’ shared obsession leads to such dark corners of the mind that your heart ends up in your throat and Mr. Rydell never lets go. Everything depends on the approaching game, and only one person can change the odds. Then the snafu, followed by a climax that is nothing less than electrifying.

Cleverly plotted, suspensefully structured, professionally acted and tightly written (Robert Tannen’s debut script is doubly impressive), Even Money shows what can happen when people are willing to screw up their lives for excitement and danger, risking everything for the next jackpot. It’s one of the best movies about gambling fever since California Split.

Nonetheless, when Stuart first visits his future wife’s family for Christmas in Missoula, Mont., there are none of the explosive encounters we have come to expect from the mixed-marriage movie (and not just those by Woody Allen, the poet laureate of non-assimilated, non-melting-pot cinema). At the engagement party, when Stuart’s extremely extroverted brother, Jordan (Jamie Harrold), unsteadily gets up to toast the couple, we again expect the worst, but Jordan uses the occasion to be sweet and eloquent. Similarly, when Nicole’s best friend, Elizabeth (Rebecca Schull), gets up for her toast, we brace for trouble—we already know that she and Stuart have never gotten along together—but after a teasingly ambivalent introduction, she too is cheerfully generous to the couple.

And so it goes throughout the film, with none of the characters taking cheap shots at one another for easy laughs—or, for that matter, any laughs at all. At first, Stuart and Nicole seem to resolve their differences in a spirit of give and take, but lingering resentments fester, particularly for Nicole. For example, she wants to have children right away, but Stuart presses for a delay of two years, partly so that they can have time to make enough money to afford children, and partly because he wants time to enjoy Nicole alone without the seismic change in their lives that a child would entail. Nicole seems to accept Stuart’s not entirely unflattering reasoning without protest. But this is just her way of going off alone and sulking. Certainly, Stuart has the whip hand when it comes to discussions of money: Not only does he make much more money than she does, but he very generously offers to pay off the $15,000 debt she has incurred from graduate school, an offer that she gratefully accepts. When she loses her job, he immediately offers to help finance her own catering business. As it happens, he has decided at the same time to give up his own lucrative publicity job to set up a firm of his own.

Todd McCarthy of Variety suggests that it’s a weakness of the film that Stuart never discusses his celebrity-filled job with Nicole, and never seems to include her in what must be a busy social life. Indeed, Stuart seems to be something of a loner in a field that thrives on making social contacts. For her part, Nicole constantly complains that he is unwilling to make friends with the neighbors in their high-rise apartment building, or even to help entertain her outside friends. She complains that he is a good talker but a bad listener.

Matters strangely reach a head when she asks if they can have a dog, and Stuart flatly refuses. It is over such little things that marital battle lines are drawn in the sand. Early on, when Nicole watches the movie of their wedding, she notices that Stuart has never actually uttered the obligatory words “I do”—which, as she confides to her best friend Elizabeth, shows that he was reluctant to undertake a permanent commitment. Still, the beauty and marvel of the film is that we can understand both points of view and sympathize with both characters. This can be attributed equally to Mr. Lipsky’s well-balanced screenplay and the excellent performances of the two leads. Mr. Kirk, most familiar to us from television as one of the stars of Angels in America, makes Stuart a contradictory mixture of limitless self-confidence and supplicating helplessness in trying to keep the love of his life from drifting inexorably away from him. In this latter regard, he reminded me of the Michel Piccoli character in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963). Ms. Nicholson has been most memorable as one of Calista Flockhart’s many rivals in the television series Ally McBeal, and currently as one of the detectives in Law and Order: Criminal Intent. As for her underappreciated screen appearances, I hope that Flannel Pajamas will redress the balance. If you miss it in theaters, try by all means to get the DVD.

Marching On

George Miller’s Happy Feet, from a screenplay by Mr. Miller, John Collee, Judy Morris and Warren Coleman, with contributions from over 1,000 other people, outgrossed Casino Royale, and I can see why. Happy Feet may be the most ambitious animated fusion of images, sounds and music ever undertaken anywhere—I am not an expert in the field, so I can’t say for sure. Was I enchanted, entertained or even diverted for its 108-minute running time? Not really. But then, of course, I am not the targeted viewer, either demographically or temperamentally. Even in the more limited realm of penguin movies, I couldn’t help thinking as I watched Happy Feet how much more moved and enthralled I was by the recent French nonfiction film, March of the Penguins. I doubt that Happy Feet would ever have been made if March of the Penguins hadn’t stirred audiences first—though they certainly were not as large as the audiences that have greeted Happy Feet.

According to the credits, such actors as Elijah Wood (Mumble), Robin Williams (Ramón/Lovelace), Brittany Murphy (Gloria), Hugh Jackman (Memphis), Nicole Kidman (Norma Jean), Hugo Weaving (Noah the Elder), Anthony La Paglia (Boss Skua), E.G. Daly (baby Mumble), Magda Szubanski (Miss Viola), Miriam Margolyes (Mrs. Astrakhan) and the late Steve Irwin (Trev) provide voices for the penguins and the other creatures they encounter in a complicated travel-and-quest plot that might have been entitled Mumble on the March. I hope the actors were paid handsomely for their labors, but I must say that all the trick voices employed, with their variety of inner-city accents, plus all the pop, rap and gospel-like singing and pounding instrumentation, distracted me somewhat from the visual reality of all the penguins, looking as much alike as the Radio City Rockettes—particularly in the final, massive musical number, which features a multitude of tap-dancing penguins supposedly responding to some beat from somewhere on high.

The subtexts are many and somewhat obvious. We elders must learn to take the musical tastes of our young people more seriously, no matter how cacophonous the new music may sound to our untutored ears. From jazz and swing in the 30’s to rock and rap in the last half of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st, a minor movie-musical subgenre has arisen about the gap in musical taste between the old and the young. An even more banal movie subtext is that a young person must follow his or her dream—to the ends of the earth, if need be.

What this has to do with the movingly peculiar lives of penguins illuminated in March of the Penguins, I don’t know. These real-life penguins respond to some unfathomable genetic code for their survival that impels them to sacrifice their natural aptitude for swimming in the sea—where their most dangerous and numerous predators abound—to waddle and crawl awkwardly to their nesting place in an icy wasteland. There, the male penguins flock together to guard the precious eggs, while the female penguins reverse the trek to search for food in the sea, after which they struggle back to their mates. This was the awesomely anguished existence of the real-life penguins on display in March of the Penguins, and it has little to do with the fake-penguin vaudeville show on display in Happy Feet, however prodigiously produced.

Depressing Darren

Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, from his own screenplay, based on a story by Mr. Aronofsky and Art Handel, was reportedly booed at this year’s Venice Film Festival—and I’m afraid I can see why. Mr. Aronofsky has brought three films to fruition in eight years, from the mathematically and cosmically low-budget, avant-garde-with-a-vengeance Pi (1998), to the more expensively produced Requiem for a Dream (2000). The latter was a wildly expressionistic, terminally depressing dirge-like drama of drug addiction, with name performers like Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly playing deluded characters mercilessly mangled by their various addictions and humiliations. A broadly caricatured version of a TV quiz show, complete with wildly cheering audience, maintains a heavily anti-establishment irony until the hellish depths are finally reached by each of the major characters with a maximum amount of physical energy.

The Fountain is, by contrast, terminally spiritual and ethereal as it follows man’s quest for eternal life via a tree from the Garden of Eden—said to have been transplanted by God to the jungles of Mexico for Tomas to discover in the 16th century while on a mission for Queen Isabella of Spain. Bearded Tomas is one of three characters played by Hugh Jackman in the film, the other two being a 21st-century beardless Tommy seeking a cure for his wife Izzi’s fatal brain tumor, and a completely bald Tom, centuries later, living inside a space bubble traveling toward the Xibalda Nebula, an astrological body believed by the Mayans to be the location of the underworld. A very wan Rachel Weisz plays Queen Isabella, the living Izzi and the ghost of Izzi. All three periods are interchangeable, but Mr. Aronofsky’s outlook on life remains too constantly pessimistic for my taste, and too completely joyless as well.

Amin for All Seasons

Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland, from a screenplay by Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock, based on the novel by Giles Foden, has lingered in local theaters largely on the strength of Forest Whitaker’s uncanny incarnation of Uganda’s President Idi Amin, who quickly evolved in the 1970’s into a brutal leader and mass murderer. The film and Mr. Whitaker both owe a debt to Barbet Schroeder’s remarkable nonfiction portrayal of the blood-soaked dictator in Idi Amin Dada (1974). The story of this real-life monster is told largely from the point of view of his young Scottish physician, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), reportedly rewritten from the book’s older and duller counterpart to make a more adventurous and not entirely sympathetic character. Garrigan becomes a lavishly rewarded flunky to the Ugandan dictator—until Garrigan’s own excesses and his belated recognition of Amin’s treachery force him to flee for his life at the site of the hijacked Air France jetliner in Entebbe. (The daring Israeli rescue of the Jewish hostages held for ransom in the airliner isn’t shown; nor is Amin’s flight to a sumptuous exile in Saudi Arabia after being overthrown.)

Arriving in Uganda with his new medical degree almost on a whim, Garrigan immediately makes a pass at an older woman, Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson), the attractive wife of an industrious British doctor (Adam Kotz). The year is 1971, and Uganda has been “liberated” in pre-Bush fashion from the rule of left-leaning leader Milton Obote. Garrigan and Sarah attend Amin’s victory celebration. Garrigan is more impressed with Amin’s boisterous personality than is the skeptical Sarah, and the next day there’s a final parting of the ways for the Merrits and Garrigan when the young Scottish doctor is hired by the Scotland-fetishizing Amin—who once served with the King’s African Rifles—after the young Scot performs some simple first aid on the dictator’s injured hand.

Garrigan is quickly installed in a posh apartment in the presidential compound; he is also given a Mercedes convertible and a bevy of women selected by Amin himself for Garrigan’s pleasure. Even so, Garrigan’s lusts remain unsatisfied. Having been easily rebuffed by Sarah in his first attempt at sexual conquest in Africa, he turns next to Kay Amin (Kerry Washington), the mother of an epileptic boy patient and one of Amin’s out-of-favor-wives. After unwisely seducing her, Garrigan tries unsuccessfully to help her escape Amin’s wrath. He has already been approached by a British Foreign Service Officer named Stone (Simon McBurney) to provide information on Amin’s death squads so that the dictator can be exposed to the outside world as the butcher he is. Garrigan remains reluctant to betray his benefactor for too long a time—well after the enormity of Amin’s crimes should have become undeniable. But when Garrigan tries to escape from Uganda, he discovers that it’s not so easy: Amin’s henchmen are everywhere, and they are not averse to torturing and executing even Amin’s closest advisors when the dictator’s paranoid fantasies so impel him. Mr. Whitaker and Mr. McAvoy head a first-rate cast that helps The Last King of Scotland to illuminate one of the many dark chapters in recent African history.

Little Children, written and directed by the enormously gifted Todd Field and based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, is one of the most delicately written, sensitively observed and unsettling of these films. Set in a plastic Massachusetts community that looks and feels like the same haunted, soulless suburbia of American Beauty, it has arrived for a regular run following its American premiere at the New York Film Festival, to tell the heartbreaking story of a convicted pedophile who returns to an unidentifiable tree-lined street in a characterless subdivision to live with his loyal, loving and long-suffering mother, hoping for anonymity and praying for a new beginning. It is stunning.

It is also the eagerly awaited follow-up to Todd Field’s acclaimed, prize-winning film, In the Bedroom, which still gives me sleepless nights. This one focuses on the desperate need for communication among people who have lost the talent for talking, touching and caring for and about their fellow human beings. While a committee of “concerned parents” protests the arrival of the paroled sex offender, the focus narrows to a select group of individuals: Sarah (Kate Winslet), a grad-school dropout married to a corporate jerk and forced into the role of stay-at-home mom; Brad (Patrick Wilson), a hunky house-bound dad that the playground gossips have dubbed the Prom King; and his beautiful but preoccupied wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), a documentary filmmaker.

Struggling to pass the bar exam and emasculated by a career-­dri­ven wife who controls the money and even decides which magazines he can subscribe to, Brad is understandably drawn to the warmth and compassion of the unhappily married Sarah. She joins a pretentious women’s reading club. He joins a time-wasting touch football league that plays at night, a perfect distraction to stay away from law school. But Sarah and Brad slowly gravitate toward each other, and an affair begins that threatens to destroy them all, while an unbalanced cop on Brad’s ball team (Noah Emmerich) takes it upon himself to destroy the poor, mentally challenged sex offender and recluse, Ronald James McGor­vey (brilliantly and chillingly played by the versatile Jackie Earle Haley).

For a while, Sarah has the best sex of her life with the best-looking and most misunderstood husband on the block, giving her new feelings of self-importance and forcing her to reorganize priorities that make her heroic in her rebellion. (She even identifies with Madame Bovary, recasting her as a saint—which is not perhaps what Flaubert had in mind.) But tragedy is always just beyond the bedroom door, and nothing turns out as it should, especially for the suddenly orphaned and defenseless neighbor with the shameful past. He’s the one who meets with the most tragedy of them all—and the one who deserves it least.

A film with dark themes and no stars, in which the most sympathetic character is a child molester, has a struggle ahead at the box office. But to miss Little Children would be a shame. It’s a rare and intelligent film for sophisticated audiences who demand more from their films than a slap and a tickle and a box of Milk Duds. The actors eschew flamboyance for honesty. The direction works hard for moment-to-moment realism. The outstanding ensemble work is as honorable as it is simple. The result is a richly detailed view of parenting as a professional sport without rules, and of the growing American paranoia under the dehumanizing blanket of homeland security. From start to finish, it is artistic, viable, wry and wrenching.

African King

A thunderous performance by Forest Whitaker as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin informs and ignites The Last King of Scotland so far beyond its limitations as both a biopic and a political thriller that he becomes the movie itself. It’s the kind of powerhouse portrayal that appears destined for an Oscar nomination. As the awards season nears, you’ll be hearing that kind of blather a lot in the months to come. But trust me on this: Forest Whitaker, in this role, is a real contender.

As a poster boy for African dictatorship, Amin ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979, promising his people education, public-health plans, civic reforms, civil rights and unconditional freedom. What he gave them was carnage, bloodshed, torture, the eradication of all opponents, the expulsion of the country’s Asian population and the mass murder of nearly half a million people.

This scalding, fast-moving narrative film debut by the acclaimed Glasgow-based documentary filmmaker Kevin Macdonald attempts to show what Idi Amin did to destroy his people and why, framed by the experiences of an eyewitness, a young Scottish doctor named Nicholas Garrigan (played by the versatile James McAvoy, who played the goat-eared Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia). Though the role itself is fictional, it was based on a composite of several actual Westerners who were close advisors to the African dictator during his reign, including his personal physician, who was Scottish.

As a recent medical-school graduate who is anxious to get away from home and make his own mark in the world, Nicholas is ready for adventure, but he has no idea what he’s getting into when he spins the globe and his finger lands on Uganda. As a hard-working young doctor in a Ugandan clinic whose appealing combination of arrogance, innocence and fearlessness attracts the attention of Amin, Nicholas thinks he’s doing a service for a Third World country by accepting the newly elected president’s invitation to become his personal physician. Ignoring the warning of a doctor (Gillian Armstrong, in an about-face from her television persona), Nicholas falls under the spell of the persuasive, charismatic African leader and becomes Amin’s most trusted friend and advisor—while behind his back, Amin labels Nicholas his new “white monkey.” Nicholas thinks he’s overcoming prejudices, superstitions and witch doctors, but he slowly comes to see that his boss is turning his country’s economy into his own private fortune while his loyal subjects are in mortal danger of extinction. The privileged treatment appeals, the president’s lavish house and grounds delight, but while the genocide grows by leaps and bounds outside, the man who was a willing guest turns into a reluctant hostage—his passport stolen and replaced with a Ugandan passport, his position compromised by the British secret service’s demands that he assassinate Amin.

Plunging himself further in harm’s way, Nicholas unwisely seals his own fate when he gets Amin’s youngest wife pregnant. His escape is a miracle: How he does it, and how he lives to tell the world the truth about Idi Amin, makes for one of the most harrowing stories of the year. Before he fled to Saudi Arabia, where he died in exile in 2003, Idi Amin was accused of the genocide of 300,000 people; the total is now estimated at half a million. Watching the first movie ever filmed in its entirety in Uganda (with the help of the current president and the support of the army), you get the eerie feeling you can see the unmarked graves.

As a monster of epic proportions, Forest Whitaker practically becomes the spiritual embodiment of the fiend he’s playing. In a performance of noise and passion, his smile is warm as hot molasses, but there’s something wrong. It curves to the side in contempt, the grin a mask of unspeakable ruthlessness. Seizing the oversized body and soul of Idi Amin’s savagery with his entire girth, Mr. Whitaker captures all of his subtleties: a mad child obsessed with power and pain, loving to his wives one minute, subjecting them to fits of degradation the next. Loving, pitiful, misunderstood, dangerous, menacing and a totally insane father figure to his country, he literally embraces Uganda in a bloodbath of evil and destruction. Based on Ugandan medical records, it is believed that syphilis drove Amin to this delusion: He really did wear kilts, force his choirs to sing “Loch Lomond” at political rallies and declare himself the last great king of Scotland. For a director who has never made anything but documentaries, The Last King of Scotland is quite an accomplishment.

Waterworld

Formulaic but so well-made that you choke on the thrills in spite of yourself, The Guardian is about a fresh breed of heroes, new to me and the movies: rescue swimmers. These are the brave, unsung underwater U.S. Coast Guard icons whose job is to save the victims of shipwrecks, hurricanes, tidal waves and other disasters at sea from drowning—a job so arduous, risky, physically punishing and stressful that the swimmers who survive look twice their age in half the time.

Kevin Costner, who has been moving securely into riskier and more challenging assignments of his own in movies like Open Range and The Upside of Anger, is perfect as Ben Randall, the traumatized veteran swimmer who suffers serious psychological damage after a particularly grim, near-fatal accident in which he loses his entire helicopter crew and sustains permanent injuries. To make matters worse, his wife (the wonderful, underrated Sela Ward) decides to rescue herself—from a dull social life on a military base with a husband who is never home. Separated, lonely and losing self-confidence, Randall is on the verge of cracking when the Coast Guard cracks down. The ultimatum: He can either become a civilian or sign on as senior instructor of an 18-week class teaching new swimmers the ropes at the Aviation Survival Training Center in Louisiana.

Tough, relentless and uncompromising, Randall flunks half of the class before the first month is out, building tensions between himself and an arrogant rookie named Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher). He’s a gifted student, fast as an electrical current in the water, and with the greatest potential to become as vital a force in the Coast Guard as Randall was. He is also a stubborn, mean-spirited screw-up, determined to get his butt kicked off the base before he can get his Speedo on. Randall can’t crack his case until he unravels the secret that keeps the boy in a constant rage and threatens his career. How the teacher finds renewed hope for his own career, and how the pupil learns to become a team player and use his gifts to help others, is what gives this movie its corny but undeniably touching center. Needless to say, the day arrives at last when both men must face an underwater challenge together, and the results teach them both a lesson for which neither is prepared.

Director Andrew Davis ( Collateral Damage, The Fugitive) has never turned out a movie of any importance, but The Guardian is unexpectedly engaging, with a bit of everything that a movie needs to please any potential audience: great special effects, unbearable suspense, believable relationships, plenty of romance and even a few tears that just sneak up on you without warning. Oddly enough, he also coaxes terrific performances out of two actors who continue to surprise. Despite all of his experience on TV and B movies, Ashton Kutcher has never shown much range, but he’s improving. Unlike Josh Hartnett in The Black Dahlia, who acts with all the emotional depth of a sidewalk, Mr. Kutcher shows signs of becoming more than just another pretty face. And Mr. Costner—mature, focused and charming—just gets better all the time.